


Restrained By More Than Chains

by lilsmartass



Category: Dark Angel
Genre: Dark, Drama, Extended Scene, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-19
Updated: 2012-09-19
Packaged: 2017-11-14 15:31:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/516850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilsmartass/pseuds/lilsmartass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Written for my Arrest square of Dark Bingo. Alec can’t let anyone know he’s a transgenic, no matter what that means for him personally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Restrained By More Than Chains

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: PG-13  
> Disclaimer: To my continuing disappointment, I don’t own the Dark Angel characters. I did find two Expanded Universe books on amazon though, does that count?  
> Warning/Spoilers: Missing scene from Hello, Goodbye, any dialogue you recognise is taken directly from this episode, some references to episodes which have come before including Pollo Loco, Proof of Purchase and The Berrisford Agenda. Non graphic references to torture and attempted rape.   
> Genre: drama, dark, missing episode scene, hurt/comfort

Alec was sick of being cuffed and hobbled and dragged around by over-zealous guards, but honestly, anything was better than being cuffed and hobbled and crippled by the fact that he couldn’t do _anything_ which might mark him as different and left in the communal cell for those still waiting to be processed. With that firmly in mind, he allowed the guard to drag him down the hallway. As he was pushed through the doorway he stumbled slightly to keep his footing, eyes up and focussed on whatever new problem awaited him. His eyes widened slightly at the sight of Max, but he forced himself to keep all emotion off his face, and not expose her play. It was hard not to burst into a smile of relief though.

Max stood, “Whitney Mann, public defender's office. I'll be handling your case.”

“Pleasure,” Alec answered the desire to grin dropping a few notches. She was pissed off he could tell, probably from having to come down here in the night when she needed to be with Logan. He grimaced as the cop slammed him into the seat but didn’t have to fight back a glare. He was still feeling pathetically grateful to be out of the holding cell and in this private room. Max was pissed off but she was still his friend, she’d still help him, if only to get back to Logan.

“You need anything, I'm right outside. You got five minutes.”

“Thank you,” Max said as Alec watched him leave.

As soon as he had done so Alec leant forward, “Max, I'm sorry, I was on my way to the hos—” He wasn’t even just saying what he knew she wanted to hear, he genuinely felt awful. He and Logan might not be the best of buddies, but he had been terrified that this horrible mix up was going to cost the computer expert his life. He would never want that, for Logan...or for Max.

“Shut up,” Max snapped, Alec drew back, trained to obey the tone of command in her voice, “I came down here to bail your sorry ass out, 'cause I figured you got grabbed up off of one of your scams going sideways. But the officer just told me you _killed_ somebody!”

“I didn't do it,” he said, striving for his usual laughing tone when someone said something ridiculous. He could hear the edge of desperation bleeding through though and he swallowed dryly. The fear he had felt in bursts since they had first held a gun to his head and cuffed him surged up again. He hated being tied like this, he felt extraordinarily vulnerable.  

Max’s expression grew colder, “You got ID'd. There's a perfect DNA match.”

“I'm telling you—” a hint of anger slid into his voice, but his eyes betrayed how frantic he was to have her believe him.

“Don't tell me anything, all right? I'm sorry I let you out of Manticore. I'm sorry I inflicted you on the world. Screw exposure. I'm leaving you here for White to deal with,” she said, preparing to leave.

“Max, I swear, I'm innocent,” normally he’d have been fighting to stop her from knowing how every word cut him to the core, but he was too panicked, too desperate to get out. _She won’t really leave me caged here for White to find...will she?_ The truly tragic thing was he knew that even if she did he would endure whatever the guards and his fellow inmates saw fit to inflict on him before he would let them know that he had abilities. If she left him here exposure wouldn’t matter for himself, but he knew the evidence was damning and he wouldn’t endanger her for believing the obvious conclusion, and the others – Joshua...if anyone found out what he was it would put them all in danger. The knowledge just spiked his desperation to convince Max to get him out of here.

“Tell that to Ames. And, uh, give him my regards.”

“You really think I could do it? You think I could murder someone in cold blood?” he tried, appealing to what he often privately thought was her too trusting nature, but also the part of her that called on him for help, and socialised with him at crash. Besides, Max helped everybody, Logan had been a bad influence, and it was easier to appeal to that side of her than to think about what White might do to him. What had happened...almost happened...in the cell would most likely seem like a declaration of true love in comparison. He still remembered the sickening pain from White’s tazer rod.

“Yes, Alec, I think you could,” she spat.

“Guy's teeth were pulled from his head, for God's sake!” he said, trying to impart the horrifying nature of the killings. Yes he was a soldier, but he wouldn’t do this. Even Max’s apparently chronically low opinion of him must believe that.

His words had some effect. She stopped dead in her tracks and murmured, “Ben...” almost too quietly to be heard. 

Alec ignored her, there was absolute fear in his wide eyes as he leaned forward slightly and implored, “Come on, Max! You know, no matter what you think, there's no way it could've been me. That guy was killed over a year ago. I was at Manticore.” _Please believe me, please please, you can’t leave me here, you can’t, please_ he bit the words back. He hadn’t begged for his life when White had implanted that damn thing in his neck and he wouldn’t beg now, but the words still shone in his eyes. 

“Time's up,” said the cop walking back into the room.

Max knocked him out and grabbed his keys, crouching to uncuff Alec where he had leaned back against the table, getting out of her way, knowing bound like this he was nothing so much as a liability in a fight.

His heart hammered in time with his thoughts, _thank God, thank God, thank God,_ but he swiftly calmed himself. They still had to get out. He felt his adrenaline spike again with dual thoughts of possibly being sent back to that cell, and knowing that, if they were, he’d have Max to protect as well as himself.

“Hey, Max,” he whispered as the crept through the silent corridor, “I'm not complaining, but what made you think I didn't do it?”

“Shh.”

“I mean, I'm just curious, you know? Was it the sincerity in my eyes? Some people say I have sincere eyes.” He tried to joke, but inside he was burning with curiosity. He had seen the loathing and disgust and _belief_ in her eyes. He wanted to know what had changed that and made her believe in him the way he believed in her.

Once again she deflected the question, and gestured sharply, “Quiet. Here.”

They slipped into the room and Max instantly headed for the window, cataloguing threats and problems as she planned their escape. It was what they had been taught to do, but Alec was too wound up to even take stock of their surroundings. Putting his faith once more in Max, he allowed her to assess the threat and think of a way out and doggedly pursued the question burning in his gut. “It was the teeth thing, wasn't it? I mean, come on, I can hardly stand going to the dentist.”

“Shut up, okay?”

“Why are you taking this so personally?”

Something hard and guilty and faraway came into her eyes, but she brushed it off and they climbed out onto the ledge, shuffling along towards the drainpipe. This time Alec kept an eye on the cops too. It did neither of them any good to be seen, and allowed her the few seconds she needed to compose her voice enough to say. “Because it was Ben.”

“Ben? My Manticore twin, Ben?” Alec asked with amazement.

“He killed Timothy Ryan and ten other people. Same M.O.”

“Whoa. They told me back at Manticore that he'd gone nuts, but...” he whistled, amazement still seeping into his voice, “serial killer?” Even as he said the words he knew they were insensitive, but it made the intensive rounds of rehabilitation and psy-ops experiments make a little more sense. It wasn’t a thought which wiped out the memories of that particular experience, but at least he understood the logic behind it now.  

“One more word and I shove you off this ledge,” Max snapped, confirming the knowledge that his words had upset her.

He watched her reach the drainpipe and shimmy down it a little way. He cast another anxious glance as the cops. “Max, tell me you got a plan,” he said a little nervously.

The rest of the escape was the usual mix of running and shooting and him clinging tightly to Max as she gunned her ninja. _I really need a bike of my own_ he thought absently, but most of his thoughts were taken up with what she had said. He tried to breathe deeply, but the speed of the bike and the wind whipping at his face made that all but impossible. He would have to ask her more about Ben he knew, and he knew that talking about her Manticore siblings hurt her the way talking about Rachel hurt him. Worse, he was now essentially on the on the run, a perfect genetic match for a brutal serial killer.

Neither of these problems kept him from focussing on the traces of residual fear still filling him. He knew he would exercise hard tonight as he tried to burn the fight-or-flight out of his system. He had been in some dangerous situations before, and he had been strapped down in some of Manticore’s worst room, awaiting their particular brand of torture, White had put a bomb in his neck and forced him to kill his own, but he had never been as frightened as he had felt cuffed and restrained and left to fend for himself amongst a group of normals knowing that if they had even a hint of what he was he would be betraying his friends.

He leaned his forehead against Max’s back, and felt her tense at the unexpected touch. He wasn’t sure what she thought he was doing, but he knew that it was such an unprecedented show of weakness that she would never suspect that he was simply clinging for the comforting reassurance that she was there, that he was out. He felt the bike slow, and with the last of his strength forced himself back upright. “Drive,” he said. “I’m just tired.”

She took half a second to glance back at him, but something in his face – _maybe his sincere eyes_ , he repressed a smirk – must have convinced her and her pinched features softened as she turned back, and gunned the engine anew. She would never know what had happened to him, because it would never occur to Max that any of them, any of the X5’s, could be rendered so helpless by mere cops. And, she’d been living with the consequences of personal loyalty for more than half her life, the fact that it was more effective than any pair of cuffs was not news to her, as the sinking, clawing sensation of fear had been to him. But she knew something was wrong.

One hand came off the handlebars to rub fleetingly at the scar on her chest where Zack had given his heart for her. The scar had healed, but the wound of losing Zack, of what had been done to – with – him was still raw, and she missed him desperately. She missed his comforting, reassuring presence and the way he had always had of making everything ok. A shift of weight at her back told her Alec was fighting to remain upright and not lean against her again, and, with a brief glance at the empty road ahead of her, she half turned once more. “It’s ok little brother,” she soothed, Zack’s words strange on her tongue, but rewarded by a flash of relaxation around Alec’s eyes, “You’re safe now.”


End file.
